Monthly Archives: July 2015

I think I have posted about our son and his food choices before. When we’re up against a wall and think he’s food deprived (is that really possible) we let him eat Wendy’s kid’s meal because he’s usually always eat chicken nuggets. But we know that is NOT a good choice every day or for the long-term pre-school/kindergarten years. This, at left is his typical meal. Not too bad really…

Fruit and processed turkey! It’s either this, rice with mixed veggies but only Uncle Ben’s NOT usually West African jolof rice, or pasta with butter sauce. He’s entering pre-K in the fall and I want him to start eating breakfast in the mornings at home because his new school will not serve breakfast, he’ll need to eat at home. So I’m contemplating cereal (which is usually eats just fine) and oatmeal (which he has yet to try). My real wish is that he eat the food we eat so that I cook one meal (like normal families right? LOL). I’ve read LOTS of blogs and consulted with all my friends on the eating issue. I understand it is a phase and that eventually (I have teenage nephews as proof) he will eat and eat a lot!

I think we should have started earlier introducing some of our ethnic foods to him , but we are without parents and our in-laws helped as they could but no one thoughtfully guided us in feeding him and introducing foods. I have realized that it takes a village and lots of time and patience and we got on that boat late (we do other things quite well for advanced-age parents)! Specifically, we’d like to introduce more green things such as okra and spinach which we and our friends and family cook and eat often….I’m not going to push the meat and chicken, but would like an alternative such as beans.

Aside from my concern for his nutrition intake, I’d like to make sure he embraces his cultures through food – an important form of socialization right?

Any other parent out there have tips on introducing new foods? I’m interested in all suggestions but am particularly interested in parents: (a) who have recently introduced green veggies and (b) with specific ethnic traditions and foods and how you introduced those foods?

It’s hard to say goodbye at any age, whether you’re a toddler getting dropped off at day care, or a teenager bidding teachers and friends goodbye at the end of the school year.
But learning how to navigate transitions is a crucial part of growing up, says Susan Linn, founding director of Campaign for a Commercial Free Childhood, and a lecturer in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

“What children need is a foundation to be able to deal with change,” she says.
How can parents build that foundation?

By letting kids know that, although no one can stop transitions, everyone has a chance to discover “what you can do to contribute to the experience, to acknowledge, and mark, and take ownership,” says Linn.

And saying goodbye is one powerful way that kids can honor a transition, and make it their own.

The parade is over. The media has moved on to analyzing Serena’s body. The discussion about equity in women’s professional sports was hot and heavy but seems to be waning after the U.S. women’s soccer team won the 2015 FIFA World Cup in Canada. The issue of women’s sports being less valued and less viewed than men’s sports is not a new issue. The 1972 Education Amendments to Title IX have been credited with raising awareness about the issue of equity for women in athletics. According to the last NCAA Gender equity report (2008), more women are participating in athletic programs, but at the college level the amount spent on women’s athletics is still less than, about half (including coaches’ salaries) what is spent on men’s programs. The Title IX legislation is necessary, it is great, and is helping. Title IX however only applies to colleges and universities in the United States. What about the non-collegiate international picture?

I am passionate about issues related to the advocacy, equity, justice, and inclusion of women. As a woman of color I am greatly concerned with the growth and development of women’s teams in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. At the moment based on the number of FIFA affiliated teams and qualifying teams for World Cup, North America and Europe dominate FIFA. Soccer is the third most frequently offered college sports program for women in the U.S. (basketball is first and volleyball is second). According to the Confederation of African Football, Africa has 54 associations/teams affiliated with FIFA. 17 of those nations had women’s teams participate in the 2015 World Cup qualifier tournament. Only the Ghanaian, Nigerian, and Cameroonian women’s teams qualified for the FIFA World Cup and only Cameroon advanced past the first round. In 2014, five African men’s teams qualified to go to the World Cup in Brazil (Algeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, and Nigeria). Only one African nation has ever hosted a World Cup (South African in 2010) and no African nation has ever won a World Cup tournament.

The Cameroonian women played with great heart! They were the first African women’s team to make it to a FIFA Round of 16 (in 1986 Morocco was the first African men’s team to reach the Round of 16). It is an awesome achievement. Most of the U.S., Canadian, and European women play for U.S. teams, Canadian teams or for the bigger European teams. Of the twenty-three women on the Cameroonian roster only one of them plays in the United States (Ajara Nchout for the Western New York Flash). Four players, including Ngono who scored the first Cameroonian goal in the tournament play in France. The other eight women play in Slovakia, Romania, Russia, Finland, Belarus, and Sweden. From the countries for which the Cameroonian women play only their home country, the U.S., France, and Sweden qualified for the 2015 World Cup. Six Cameroonian women play for teams whose national team did not qualify for the World Cup, four of those teams have never qualified for the World Cup (Slovakia, Russia, Finland, and Belarus). The lack of opportunities for the Cameroonian women to develop their soccer skills and showcase their talents is representative not only of the lack of equity for women in Africa but also of the lack of equity for many women’s and men’s teams in countries without enough resources and socio-political clout to develop further.

FIFA’s website has a tab that links to their development programs described as “…focusing on four main areas of football development – competitions, management, education and promotion. This includes the Live Your Goals campaign launched in 2011 to inspire more young girls and women to get involved in football.” On paper the development programs’ mission and goals are exactly what needs to be said about the promotion of women athletes. The same can be said for the FIFA global development programs which provide support for men’s teams also to “improve the state of the sport worldwide”. However, when the parent organization and some nation affiliates are struggling with corruption, when some of the participating nations’ men’s teams are under-developed, and when the hype of women’s sports victories lasts a week at best how can the Cameroonian women’s soccer team or any other women athletes stand a chance of gaining equity? What will it take for women and other under-represented populations to gain international athletic opportunities and recognition so that the playing fields can be equal? Who will address the inequitable intersection of gender, nationality, and socio-economic status in international athletics?

Four years ago, I embarked on two of the scariest, but important journeys thus far in my life. I was getting ready to start my undergrad at Syracuse University, and I chopped off half my hair.

I had been transitioning for a while; I craved big hair and a change. The cut, however was not planned. I originally wanted to wait one more month till I was “ready”, but after taking out my weave I couldn’t bear to deal with the two textures anymore. So right in my bathroom I reached for a pair of regular scissors and started snipping away at the straight ends. When I finished, I stared in the mirror in shock for what seemed like a lifetime. The very next day, I bought an at home DIY Brazilian Hair Straightening treatment (it wasn’t permanent) to fix what I did.

There has been a lot to write about lately. SO much that I have felt almost frozen and overwhelmed by which topic(s) to blog about. So I wrote the Opinion Piece instead and then posted and re-posted lots of mini opinions on FaceBook about ALL the current events.

You can quickly determine who is like-minded and who is not.

I am not delusional about who my family, friends, colleagues, and acquaintances are and who they are not.

I do not mind agreeing to disagree. This is part of what makes living in the U.S. so nice.

What doesn’t make living in the U.S. so nice is that we each live in some type of privilege that then often leads us to hate on someone else based on our privileged identity (whether that is one identity or many).

Hiding behind one privileged identity and it’s values and morals in order to hate on another group is still discrimination, oppression, and hatred.

I am an equal social justice advocate. Not all vulnerable and oppressed groups experience discrimination the same. But each vulnerable and oppressed group deserves to live free of fear of oppression and violence. That is true for abused women, infertile women, LGBT families and individuals, folks without enough resources, racial and ethnic “minorities,” etc., etc., etc.

So, I noticed you didn’t like my posts and that’s o.k. I doesn’t make my passionate advocacy any less, it just assures me that I should be louder until wide-spread justice occurs.